________________
Impressions of America my heart in a way I shall never forget. It is impossible for me to put in words the permanent effect these delightful spiritual and intellectual communing will have upon me after I return to my native land - only this - I know it will be good and only good and that continually. When I shall speak to my family and my people of all this and then show them pictures of you until your faces shall become familiar to them, the bonds of sympathy that shall unite us will strengthen and strengthen, and vibrate in mutual and in increasing fellowship.
The next thing that impresses me with peculiar significance is that system of popular education which you call the "common school.” Through the hospitable facilities afforded on every hand, Thave learned much of your great institutions of learning, universities, colleges, gymnasiums, schools of art, schools of music and of applied science, and standing in the fresh morning of your national life, I have gazed upon these monuments of your intellectual progress, and industry with wonder and amazement and also with gratitude; but when I come to study that system of education, which is in a way, peculiar to your country, and which brings the school and the schoolmaster to all people, to the children of the humblest and the lowest on equal terms with the children of the wealthy and the proud, my admiration and my wonder yield to a sense of appreciation that I may call devout and religious. For, although I and my people in the narrow view of a mere sectarian may be esteemed ignorant, superstitious and idolatrous. We the people of India. especially those who have been permitted to pass through the curriculum of education, hold to the doctrine that at the bottom of all progress and answerable for all happiness is universal education. Also, that this education must be free, also, that it must be necessary, that it must include those lessons that pertain to physical life, its relations and perfections, as well as to the cultivation of the intellectual faculties and the moralities of life.
241
Jain Education International
For Personal & Private Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
